Thursday night’s fire at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant following an attack by Russian forces was confined to a single building at the site and damaged no reactors or essential equipment. The Financial Times reported Friday morning that the International Atomic Energy Agency said that radiation levels at the plant are “normal.” Russian forces now control the plant.
The Financial Times reported that Ukrainian officials “blamed the fire on Russian shelling” and “warned of the continuing risks to operating the plant in battlefield conditions” while Russia’s defense ministry “accused Ukrainian forces of starting the fire and staging a ‘monstrous provocation.'”
By now, most non-Russians would read that claim by Russian officials as nothing more than a lie. While the fog of war usually distorts the facts, the claim that Ukrainians sought to blow up the largest nuclear power plant in Europe beggars belief.
The Russian claim makes no sense, but there is another factor in play. As many reports have pointed out over the past week, Ukraine is winning the media war. Now Ukrainian officials are going to open another front in the war.
Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s head digital official, tweeted Thursday that the country is going to mint and sell non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to raise money for the country’s military forces.
After careful consideration we decided to cancel airdrop. Every day there are more and more people willing to help Ukraine to fight back the agression. Instead, we will announce NFTs to support Ukrainian Armed Forces soon. We DO NOT HAVE any plans to issue any fungible tokens
— Mykhailo Fedorov (@FedorovMykhailo) March 3, 2022
Ukraine already has raised some $270 million from the sale of war bonds and has raised almost $50 million in cryptocurrency donations of bitcoin, ethereum, solana and polkadot. The government had originally planned to make the digital transactions free (the airdrop Fedorov refers to in his tweet) but will instead issue NFTs. Exactly what those will be has not been specified.
At the same time, the European Union is considering additional measures to ensure that Russia does not use cryptocurrency to sidestep sanctions on the country’s financial system. Ordinary citizens in both Russia and Ukraine have used been using cryptos to safeguard their cash from skyrocketing inflation (Russia) or uncertainty about the outcome of the fighting (Ukraine).
The tighter rules on cryptocurrencies are likely to be targeted at Russia’s oligarchs who could use crypto to move assets and avoid sanctions. The U.S. Treasury Department already bans a list of individuals and businesses from the U.S. banking system. Any company doing business with these “Specially Designated Nationals” (SDNs) is subject to fines of up to $20 million and up to 30 years imprisonment.
Ukrainian cybersecurity firm Hacken claims to have recruited 10,000 hackers from 150 countries to identify vulnerabilities in the country’s systems that need to be patched and to identify vulnerabilities in Russian systems that can be attacked.
Fears of Russian attacks on Ukraine have not materialized. Reuters has reported that U.S. Senator Mark Warren, chair of the Senate’s intelligence committee, said on Monday that it does not appear that Russia’s top hacking groups had yet launched a major attack on Ukraine.
All three major U.S. stock indexes closed lower on Thursday. The Nasdaq closed down 1.56%, the S&P 500 down 0.53% and the Dow Jones industrials down 0.29%. Utilities stocks posted the day’s biggest gain, up 1.8%. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude settled at $107.67, down about 3.2% for the day. In early trading Friday, WTI traded up 2.9% at $111.08. Brent crude settled at $110.46 Thursday and traded up about 2.5% early Friday at $113.22.
The 10-year U.S. Treasury note settled at 1.84% on Thursday, down two basis points, and the two-year note added two basis points to close at 1.54%. The 10-year/two-year yield curve narrowed from 0.36 to 0.33.
Gold settled at $1,935.90 an ounce on Thursday and traded up by about 0.7% at $1,949.30 early Friday. Bitcoin declined again Tuesday to close at $42,127. The cryptocurrency dropped another 1.5% Friday morning to trade at around $41,480.
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